One comes away from this grim novel [Favours] reminded of Ivy Compton-Burnett. The resemblance is not stylistic: Where Compton-Burnett tended to use dialogue to achieve her effect, Bernice Rubens employs a rather thick mixture of narrative and stream of consciousness. No, the similarity goes deeper: For the author's characters, as for Compton-Burnett's, life is a sorry business—mere existence—whose strictures are dictated by an uncaring someone or something.

Although God is not mentioned in Favours, there seems to be at work in the novel a primal force more indifferent than Thomas Hardy's Immanent Will. The two protagonists are Miss Hawkins, sometimes referred to as Jean, and Brian Watts….

Miss Hawkins is destined to be Brian's victim. The habit of obedience she acquired as a child at an orphanage—where love of Christ excluded love of the orphans—has stood her in good stead….

The weaknesses of Favours...